People often say, “The #Fediverse is bigger than just #Mastodon!”
But that’s not quite true; Mastodon is actually four times bigger than the rest of the Fediverse COMBINED. And its size matters:
If Mastodon is four times bigger than the rest of the Fediverse
combined, then that means to focus solely on Mastodon is to miss that other 20% of the universe.
So yep, it just goes to show that The #Fediverse is bigger than just #Mastodon!”
That’s true, although we have to be careful about what the right moves are because certain improvements to Mastodon, making the right moves for Mastodon, amount to introducing proprietary elements that reflect the centralized platforms we’re trying to get away from.
So we have to be a bit careful about what the right moves are.
@josemanuel @volkris Interesting take! Are there things that Mastodon’s leadership could do to mitigate the risk, in your mind?
@matt @josemanuel @volkris They could work closer with other fedi devs. They should consult with other fedi devs on mastodon specific features, because there’s no such thing as a software specific feature on the fediverse. This is how browser development works with multiple vendors competing against each other but still building software that can run any site.
An example would be Group support. Lemmy, GNU Social, and lotide have all been implementing support for groups collaboratively on the activitypub forum, and mastodon devs have rarely participated (I’ve never seen gargron there). But group support is on the mastodon roadmap; if history is any indicator, they’ll implement it in a way that makes sense for mastodon without looking at the prior art and we’ll have compatibility issues.
@matt @josemanuel @volkris Marketing is a second issue. Since its inception, the mastodon team have constantly reached out to journalists, done interviews, used other social media , etc to market mastodon. And this marketing consistently emphasizes mastodon over the fediverse, positions the fediverse as mastodon + others vs twitter (furthering the notion that the fediverse is a microblogging platform), and ignores the contributions that other software has made to the fediverse. It’s part of the reason that mastodon has such a huge share of the fediverse. They put a huge focus on marketing, so they got a lot of mindshare. Then they started getting donations, which led to govt grants and now they are more funded than any other fediverse project so they can afford to pay devs and even more marketing.
I think you’re right, and unfortunately, that description reminds me of so many other projects that started off open and beloved but over time closed off even with a vague notion of, well there’s an open source version if you really really want to use it.
I don’t think Mastodon is all that great at the moment, but when you describe it like that it makes me fear even more for the future.
@0x1C3B00DA @josemanuel @volkris Interesting! I hope that Mastodon doesn’t allow its “mass” to distract from core values—e.g., prioritizing interoperability and (to your point) collaborating with devs in the broader Fediverse.
@matt @0x1C3B00DA @josemanuel I’d say the drama over #QT already shows that it’s problematic to have #Mastodon as such a singular power in the #Fediverse
Agree. It’s already been happening for years and that’s when the difference in userbases was way less pronounced. The only way I see it changing is people switching to other software, including masto forks, and for masto forks to be more opinionated and make their own development choices
@matt I’m perfectly fine with Gargron making money off of Mastodon, but he should stop running it like a business, acting like everybody else is their competition. It’s called the Fediverse for a reason.
One example: I read earlier today that he was considering implementing quote-posts. Problem is, there are already QP in the Fediverse, just not in Mastodon. That means there is already a standard, set by Misskey and adopted by everyone else except him. Do you think most people even know that? Of course not. For them, everything that’s not Mastodon is Mordor. And do you think Gargron will implement QPs is a compatible way? Of course not. He will use his “market share” to say: “I don’t have to listen to anybody else. This is, after all, the Mastodon Network.”
The Fediverse exists and thrives because of its diversity, but he just strives for uniformity. And don’t be mistaken, he’s been like that from the start. This behaviour is not new at all.
@volkris This may be a classic “both-and” situation! We should (1) encourage a flourishing, diverse Fediverse ecosystem, while also (2) ensuring that its most prominent platform makes the right moves.